It’s a question we’re asked all the time as we begin a planning project: Who should be involved?
It’s a good one because the answer varies across different phases of the planning process. We need enough participation from senior leadership so we understand where the business is going and don’t get too far down the road on assumptions they would have challenged. At the same time, the CEO, founder, or president probably doesn’t need to spend hours at every working session unless they really want to.
We also want perspectives from people who see parts of the business that leadership may not see firsthand. Sales. Client service. Practice leaders. People responsible for delivering the work. People close to customers. And, whenever possible, customers themselves. Building a marketing plan from one person’s intuition—or entirely within the marketing department—leaves too much of the business out of the picture.
So, early in a planning engagement, we spend some time figuring out who needs to be involved and how. There may be a small group participating, senior leaders joining at important checkpoints, and other people brought in when their knowledge is particularly useful. Sometimes, we’ll involve an emerging next generation of leadership more heavily than their current titles might suggest because they’re going to be responsible for where the company goes next.
The goal isn’t max participation. It’s getting the right perspectives and enough decision-making authority into the process without turning planning into a standing committee meeting.
The core planning group should be small enough to make decisions
We like a relatively small empowered group at the center of marketing planning. It usually includes leadership and the people with functional responsibility for marketing. Depending on the company, that could be an owner, CEO, president, marketing leader, sales leader, or some combination of them.
Titles matter less than authority and working knowledge. Someone needs to know what marketing is doing now, where things stand, what has already been tried, where the files and information live, who is responsible for what, and how to get the planning team connected to the right people. We also want to be able to reach people across the company directly when their knowledge can help us, without adding unnecessary steps or filtering their perspective along the way.
The core group also needs enough authority to make real choices. Planning eventually requires saying yes to some things and no to others. It involves priorities, budget, people, time, and usually some uncomfortable tradeoffs. A group that can discuss those things but can’t decide them is an advisory committee, whether anyone calls it that or not.
There still needs to be someone who can make the final call when the group doesn’t agree. The golden rule applies here in its less charitable form: whoever has the gold makes the rules. If someone controls the budget or has the authority to overrule the plan, we need to know that from the beginning.
The final decision-maker can’t parachute in at the end
Senior leaders don’t need to attend every working session, but anyone with real decision-making authority needs checkpoints along the way. That gives us their perspective while it can still improve the work, and gives them a chance to see how the thinking is developing.
Otherwise, the CEO may see the plan for the first time and ask why an important market wasn’t considered. An owner may question an assumption that shaped three recommendations. A board may have a different view of a strategic direction everyone else thought had already been settled. What was supposed to be a final review suddenly becomes a new round of planning.
Regular checkpoints help prevent that. Decisions get made while they’re cheaper and easier to change, and the people who will ultimately approve the plan aren’t being asked to bless a finished product they barely recognize. They’ve helped shape the important decisions without having to sit through every meeting required to get there.
Good planning requires access to people who know things the planning group doesn’t
A small decision-making group shouldn’t become a small info-gathering group. We want access to people across the company who have firsthand knowledge relevant to the plan. If marketing is expected to support sales, we want to talk with sales. If client-service people are hearing the same concern over and over, that matters. If the people delivering the work see an opportunity marketing could help the company capitalize on, we want to understand it. The same applies to practice leaders, technical experts, finance, operations, or other specialists, depending on the business.
We gather input broadly during planning because leadership can’t see everything firsthand. People close to clients hear things that never make it into the leadership meeting. The people doing the work often understand its value in ways the company has never managed to put into words. If we’re going to make decisions about how the company goes to market, we want to hear from the people who know what happens when it actually does.
Voice-of-the-customer research is especially valuable. We want to hear directly from customers about why they chose the company, what they value, where it stands apart, what frustrates them, what they wish it did differently, and what they tell other people about it. We’ve seen those conversations uncover meaningful differentiation that has fueled campaigns and content, changed how services are delivered, influenced feature development timelines, and informed company policies. Sometimes the most useful finding is something nobody inside the company knew to ask about.
That’s the kind of input that can make the plan better before the company starts spending money to execute it.
Pick your spots for broader involvement
Different parts of planning benefit from different people. The trick is bringing them in when their experience and expertise can make the work better.
Before voice-of-the-customer research, for example, we may want to talk with the people who spend the most time with customers so we understand what they’re seeing and what they’d like us to explore. When we’re trying to understand why sales are stalling, we want salespeople involved in that conversation. A technical specialist may be essential while we’re working through how a service should be positioned, while someone from finance may be especially useful when assumptions start turning into budgets. That’s staged, role-specific involvement. People can contribute meaningfully where their knowledge matters most, while the core planning group keeps the whole process moving and connects the pieces.
We also want people across the company to recognize the business in the work. When we share what we’ve heard through interviews, surveys, customer research, and other parts of planning, one of the best reactions is some version of, “Yes. That’s us. We’ve never said it exactly that way, but that’s us.”
Getting there requires listening to more of the team, but it doesn’t mean giving everyone a vote.
A small decision-making group gives good ideas room to develop
A small, empowered group can have candid conversations, work through disagreements, and make choices without every decision becoming a referendum. That matters because planning involves plenty of questions where there isn’t an obviously correct answer. There may be several good options, and the job is to decide which ones deserve the company’s attention.
Broader input still matters, but there’s a point where adding more can push ideas to what we call “the muddy middle.” People naturally bring the interests of their departments, budgets, clients, and previous decisions into the room. Hierarchy can change a conversation, too. A promising idea may never get much consideration if people are busy trying to predict what the most senior person thinks about it.
Creative and strategic choices are especially vulnerable. If one group wants black and another wants white, a committee picks gray. That doesn’t make gray the right answer, just the answer nobody disliked enough to keep arguing about.
We’ve seen the same thing happen to positioning, messaging, campaigns, and entire marketing plans. Distinctive ideas need enough room to be considered on their merits before everybody starts sanding off the edges. Great ideas seldom emerge from committees, and they don’t improve simply because more people have been given editing privileges.
People can help shape the plan without getting an equal vote
People support what they help create, but that idea can be taken too far. Participation and decision-making aren’t the same things.
A good planning process may involve leadership, marketing, sales, customer-facing employees, technical experts, outside partners, customers, and others at different stages. Their knowledge is essential to the plan. But somebody has to pull it all together, make judgments, choose among competing good ideas, and decide where the company will put its money and time.
Those inputs rarely arrive neatly aligned. Leadership sees one part of the picture. Employees see another. Customers add something else. Research raises questions nobody was asking when the process began. Good planning has to weave those threads into something coherent without pretending every thread deserves equal weight.
That’s why we’d rather have a small empowered group and broad access to key team members than a large marketing committee. The company benefits from what its people know without asking all of them to make every decision together.
The people who ultimately own the decisions should be involved throughout the process. Everyone else should be brought in where their knowledge can make the plan better.
